Designated Targets

client?”

“We never touched him!” Swinson protested. “Did we?” he asked, turning a baleful eye on Slim Jim.

“The hell you didn’t, you fucking assholes. You frog-marched me in here and then you threw me into the desk, and I’ll bet I got a big bruise out of it. I could prove it, too.” He started to undo his belt.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Davidson,” said his lawyer. “I’m sure we can find a doctor who’ll testify in the civil suit.”

“There won’t be any suit,” Swinson blustered. “A two-bit hustler like Davidson. Done time for chiseling somebody’s grandmother. Good luck, sister.”

Slim Jim winced uncomfortably. That goddamned rubber check was always bouncing back in his face.

It didn’t seem to bother Ms. O’Brien, though. She still had that nasty smile on her face: the one that reminded him of feeding time at the zoo. “Well now, Agent Swinson, I don’t believe Mr. Davidson has ever made a secret of his former life. In fact, it’s very much public knowledge. Just as his efforts to reform himself, and to make amends for his past misdeeds, are also public knowledge. You may not be aware of it, but Mr. Davidson has made an ex gratia payment of five thousand dollars to Mrs. Durnford, the grandmother to whom you refer. A significant return on the twenty-four-dollar check he wrote to her grocery store, when he was unfortunately unaware of a shortfall of funds within his account.

“You may also be aware of—”

Swinson cut in over the top of her. “Hey, we know all about your client, Miss O’Brien. You might have earned a pretty penny turning him into the new fucking Santa Claus, but water still finds its own level, lady. And he’s a crook. Always has been. Always will be.”

“I guess we’ll see about that,” said O’Brien. “In the meantime, I’ll be pursuing an order against you gentlemen, and any other agents of the Bureau who are sent to harass my client concerning anything other than legitimate government business.”

“We’re just doing our job,” Swinson growled. “Some people still work for their country, O’Brien.”

Slim Jim wondered how she’d take that. Ms. O’Brien was inordinately proud of her time in the Marine Corps —much more than he was of his hitch in the navy. If they meant to get under her skin, though, they failed. She simply raised an eyebrow and produced a large leather folder. It contained a data slate. She powered up, opened a file, and there was Slim Jim’s apartment on screen.

There he was in his bathrobe.

And there were the two feebs, muscling him.

It was the surveillance footage from the microcams hidden all over his home. Geraghty was administering a savage, unprovoked blow to the back of his head.

“Hmm, not such a good cop after all, are we, Agent Geraghty?” Ms. O’Brien teased with a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. At that moment, Slim Jim thought he might just be in love with his scary lawyer.

The others had crowded into the small room and were also watching, which only added to the agents’ awkwardness. The video made them look and sound like a couple of stupid thugs. Marilyn gasped when Swinson threatened to tell her ex-husband where he could find her.

“You bastards,” she said. “That was just a marriage of convenience. If I hadn’t hooked up with him, I would have been sent back to the orphanage. My guardian used to pay him to go out on dates with me!”

Slim Jim wasn’t the only one who found himself caught out by that. Every man in the room, and even the other two women reacted with obvious surprise. Norma turned a cold, level stare on the feds. When she spoke, it didn’t sound like her at all. There was nothing soft in her voice. It sounded like she was grinding up rocks with her teeth.

“Don’t you imagine for a second that you can involve me in any of your grubby schemes,” she went on. “You have no idea of the life I’ve just escaped. Or what I will do to avoid going back there. You can expect to hear from my lawyers.”

Slim Jim began to wonder whether it was such a good idea dating someone like Norma. She apparently had hidden depths.

Hidden depths were not good. Not in his experience. He began to wonder if she’d been using him all the way along.

The man and woman who’d come in with her remained silent. But he could tell they were fascinated. The chick, in particular. Davidson didn’t doubt she was twenty-first. Her clothes told him that much. But he began to wonder what angle she had. She didn’t strike him as the soldierly type. Ms. O’Brien spoke up while he was wondering.

“According to the contemporary law specialists at my firm, there’s evidence of seven separate indictable offenses on this stick alone. But of course, that’s only if I file here. On the other hand, if I file in-zone, by my count there are sixty-two civil and criminal actions available to Mr. Davidson, should he wish to seek a remedy for the Bureau’s actions.”

Geraghty came out from behind his bland persona. A large vein was throbbing in his neck, and his knuckles were white with the effort of controlling himself. “You won’t be filing anything anywhere, you bitch. You’ll be lucky to come out of this without doing jail time yourself.”

The agents hadn’t noticed—they weren’t as familiar with the technology—but Slim Jim distinctly saw the dark-haired woman press a hot key on the flexipad riding at her hip. She had to be recording this.

“Once again,” O’Brien said, “I’ll guess we’ll see about that. But you gentlemen should inform your superiors at the earliest opportunity that I will be dragging you ass-backwards and buck-naked through the briar patch. You should also inform your superiors that I intend to call Director Hoover as a witness, and if he tries to blow me off the way he does with every inconvenient inquiry that comes his way, I’ll ask the bench to issue a warrant for his arrest. And I will have him dragged kicking and screaming to the stand. So he might want to go out and buy himself a nice new dress for his big day in court.”

O’Brien’s voice didn’t get louder or faster as she spoke. Quite the opposite, in fact. When she was finished, she leaned forward, almost close enough to kiss Agents Geraghty and Swinson on the tips of their noses, and Slim Jim had to strain himself to hear. The faces of the two men, however, told him that they’d understood everything.

They were—what was that thing Ms. O’Brien liked to say?—oh yeah. They were toast.

The agents sent a threatening glare in his direction as they slunk out of the room, but as a confidence man himself, Slim Jim knew they’d been rolled.

“You owe Ms. Monroe a steak dinner, Mr. Davidson,” O’Brien told him once they’d left. “She came and got me as soon as they grabbed you.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said to Marilyn.

“What a pair of assholes,” spat the soon-to-be starlet. “I can’t believe the FBI would employ such people.”

Both O’Brien and the other chick, the one with the flexipad, snorted in amusement.

“This is Ms. Julia Duffy, Mr. Davidson, and her escort, Commander Dan Black,” O’Brien said. “Ms. Duffy works for the New York Times, and she had asked me if she could interview you about the harassment you’ve suffered at the hands of Mr. Hoover. As your attorney, I would advise you to agree to the request. Although I should mention that I act for Ms. Duffy in another capacity, and if—”

Slim Jim held up his hand. “That’s enough. I’ll talk to her. You wrote that fucking amazing bit about that guy called Snider, didn’t you, Ms. Duffy. On the Brisbane Line. Walter Winchell reckons he’s gonna get a Medal of Honor for that.”

Julia Duffy shook his hand. She had a grip as firm and dry as O’Brien’s, but he noticed with surprise that her hands were heavily callused, like a workman’s.

“If he gets it, it won’t be because I wrote a story. It’ll be because he deserves a medal,” she said. “He saved our lives, and at great risk to his own.”

“Uh-huh,” said Slim Jim. “Be a feather in your cap, too, though, wouldn’t it?”

“Mr. Davidson,” O’Brien cautioned him.

“It’s okay.” Duffy smiled. “Your client is a lot smarter than most people would give him credit for. Not by book learning, but with rat bastard cunning, if I’m not mistaken. Wouldn’t that be right, Slim Jim?”